Forum on the Humanities and the Public World

Philip Kan Gotanda and Carey Perloff, American Conservatory Theater
“After the War”

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 | 7 pm | A.C.T. Theatre, San Francisco
Monday, April 9, 2007 | 5 pm | Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Panelists: Philip Kan Gotanda, Playwright; Carey Perloff, Artistic Director, American Conservatory Theater; Colleen Lye, Department of English; and Duncan Williams, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures.

After the War: When more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II, San Francisco’s bustling Japantown suddenly became an urban ghost town. African Americans from the neighboring Fillmore District, rural whites from the Midwest, and other societal outcasts began to fill the vacant neighborhood. But what happened when the Japanese Americans came back? In the world premiere of After the War, commissioned and developed by A.C.T. under the direction of Carey Perloff, Philip Kan Gotanda portrays an unexpected grouping of characters as they struggle to revive a community shattered by the effects of the war. Radiantly hopeful, heart-wrenchingly honest, and deeply infused with the jazz rhythms of the neighborhood, After the War is a powerful valentine to San Francisco—and to the every-day people who built the city with their lives, loves, and stories.

Philip Kan Gotanda is a local playwright and filmmaker whose plays, which include A Fist of Roses, Yohen, The Wind Cries Mary, Floating Weeds, Sisters Matsumoto, Fish Head Soup, Ballad of Yachiyo, and Yankee Dawg You Die, have been produced locally (Asian American Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Campo Santo+Intersection for the Arts, Eureka Theatre, Magic Theatre, and San Jose Repertory Theatre), as well as at theater companies across the country, in Great Britain, and Japan. Gotanda is also an independent filmmaker whose works have been seen in film festivals around the world.  Throughout his career Gotanda has embodied the heart and spirit of an artist dedicated to telling his own particular world’s stories, in the process creating one of the largest and most varied bodies of Asian-American-themed work. Frank Rich, of the New York Times, calls him “a polemicist who sees both sides of a question, a writer whose grievances are balanced by a wicked sense of humor.”

Carey Perloff is celebrating her 15th season as artistic director of A.C.T., where she most recently directed its acclaimed productions of Brecht/Weill’s Happy End and A Christmas Carol (a new adaptation by Perloff with Paul Walsh). In addition to Travesties, this season Perloff directs A Christmas Carol and the world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War. Her new play, Luminescence Dating, developed under a grant from The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project, will make its West Coast debut this November at the Magic Theatre. Perloff’s recent A.C.T. productions include David Mamet’s new adaptation of Granville-Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance, Constance Congdon’s A Mother (an A.C.T.-commissioned adaptation of Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova), Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Her production of Marie Ndiaye’s visionary work Hilda, co-produced with Laura Pels Productions, traveled to Washington D.C.’s Studio Theatre and then to New York’s 59E59 Theater in the fall of 2005. Before joining A.C.T., Perloff was artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York. Under Perloff’s leadership, Classic Stage won numerous Obie Awards for acting, direction, and design, as well as the 1988 Obie for artistic excellence.

Visit the American Conservatory Theater website for more information about After the War.